


Tea, Sympathy, Punishment

by iberiandoctor (jehane)



Category: Les Misérables (Movie 1978), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Javert Survives, Awkward Conversations, Blackstone's formulation, Conversations about Morals, Dubious Consent Fantasy, Fun with t/v distinctions, Imagined Spankings, Javert is both prim and a dick, M/M, Middle Aged Virgins, Post-Seine, Proportionate Justice, Rehabilitative Justice, Repression, Sad cerebral Valjean, Snark, Tea, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Very vague BDSM fantasy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-30
Updated: 2016-09-30
Packaged: 2018-08-18 16:25:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8168417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jehane/pseuds/iberiandoctor
Summary: Valjean and Javert discuss Blackstone over a bourgeois cuppa. It goes about as well as you'd expect.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kainosite](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kainosite/gifts).



> For Kainosite, with so much gratitude. I would have made you a treat involving treesex, but I think someone else already bagged that idea! 
> 
> Here is this dirty little secret treat instead, involving tongue-in-cheek conversation about morals where Valvert call each other _'vous'_ and just enough nudge-wink action to skate by the exchange requirements. (No ponytails or formless puddle-ing or feeding kink were engaged in in the writing thereof.)

"Would you take tea?" Valjean enquired.

"Tea is the prerogative of the bourgeois," Javert muttered. His forehead felt damp, his hands not entirely steady, as if he was no longer quite himself. Then again, he had not been at all himself since this man had destroyed his world, or, more accurately, since Javert had chosen to destroy himself rather than to rebuild it. He had considered the task impossible -- for who could imagine a world in which law was made the handmaiden of compassion, in which Javert himself could have been conquered by ruinous sympathy?

Now, thanks to this man, it would seem he was being compelled to rebuild it, anyway, in the light of a strange new moral sun. Javert had never before shirked from hard work, but he was not enjoying the task.

Valjean shrugged. "A habit I acquired in Montreuil-sur-Mer. If you prefer, Inspector, I will ask Toussaint to bring coffee."

"No longer the Inspector, thanks to you," Javert said pointedly. He knew he had not been able to address Valjean as 'thou' since the barricades; he ought to have realised the rigid strictures of his world had been crumbling even then. 

Too late for that now. This new world needed building, concession by concession, concept by concept. Javert knew he should learn to select his battles more judiciously. With some effort, he adopted a more conciliatory tone: "In any case, I seem to have acquired a taste for your brand of mercy despite myself, so I might as well try your taste in this as well."

Valjean poured tea, and Javert drank silently. The tea was unsweetened and bitter. And yet he had to admit it was not altogether unpleasant, in the same way as the curl of hair on the man's forehead was not unpleasant, or the curve of those large hands gently cupping the porcelain. 

It seemed that was the thing about mercy as well: the taste grew on one, as addictive as gratitude, as habit-forming as bad posture. Perhaps, rather than wood and granite, his new world was to be built on homilies and sympathy. He could not say he was pleased about the prospect.

"You said I was responsible for your spiritual revelation at the river," Valjean said at last. "I am grateful that you have learned about mercy, but I doubt you learned it wholly from me."

"As you know, I do not require your gratitude," Javert said with a curl of his lip. It would have sounded even more satisfying if he had managed the 'thou' in that instance. "And it was less of a spiritual revelation than it was a moral one." 

Valjean did not return Javert's scorn. Instead, his sad eyes grew sadder. "You had said you had a sense of God at the river? Surely it is from Him that both mercy and moral revelation stem."

Javert scowled. The sense of his new superior still rankled, although he had at last stopped feeling the urge to hurl in his resignation every time he set foot under God's roof. He knew he must make the most reluctant redeemed soul in all of France. Far safer instead to speak in terms of men's philosophy and of morals. 

"In fact, I have been reading about theories of proportionate justice. That you managed to transform your life demonstrates, contrary to my previously-held views, that criminals can in fact change for the better... Which suggests that our criminal justice system should prioritise rehabilitation over punishment, for the overall betterment of our civilisation." 

Javert had also started to maintain a detailed note of further recommendations for improvements to the service. It seemed his desire for list-making had not been knocked out of him by his plunge into the Seine.

Valjean said mildly, "And thus men's philosophies and morals begin to meet that which is in God's heart, which sees each man's soul as a battleground between Good and Evil."

Those sad eyes shone with inner light. So had Madeleine looked while extending charity to the needy in Montreuil-sur-Mer, while making commanding speeches concerning municipal services in the town hall. This had been in the days when Javert addressed him as _'vous'_ and bowed to him besides, when his suspicions of that man lay side by side with his admiration for the mayor's air of authority. Now it felt as if they were returning to that time, as if Javert's previous conflicted regard for Madeleine was merging with his present feeling for Jean Valjean. 

Javert's recollection of his actions in Montreuil-sur-Mer filled him with the disquiet he had come to recognise: the doubt and then regret that had overcome him on the banks of the Seine. Swallowing hard, Javert added, "Also, that the strict application of law ought to be tempered by an exercise of moral discretion. It has occurred to me that I ought to have withheld from the arrest of the woman, Fantine, in Montreuil, in the same way as I withheld from arresting you last summer." He gritted his teeth. "This, too, might have been to society's betterment."

He half-expected Valjean to fly into the same cold rage as Madeleine had that night in the station house in Montreuil, when he had ordered Javert to set Fantine at liberty. Certainly, Valjean would have been within his rights to lay blame -- Javert now realised his responsibility for his blind adherence to law, his cruelty to the desperate woman that had driven her to their death. But Valjean's eyes looked sadder and more shiny, and he did not seem angry with Javert at all. Javert did not know if he would ever understand the man. 

Valjean said, "Such a temperance would also prioritise justice for the individual. This is the legal argument that has been propounded by Voltaire, by Blackstone, and since the Biblical times of Genesis: that it is better to free ten guilty men than let one innocent suffer."

This concept had been an anathema to Javert in his previous life. Before he could stop himself, he felt the rising outrage that belonged to the irrepressible Inspector, whom the mayor had long ago and unthinkably refused to dismiss from his position. 

"Does this not mean that no criminal ought to be punished, lest an innocent be punished inadvertently? That is clearly ridiculous!" Javert watched his fist pound the surface of the table violently, making the tea things jump. "The moral good that is done by protecting society from many criminals ought to trump the injustice committed to one person. So too that which benefits many must surely outweigh that which only benefits one!"

Valjean reached out and placed his hand over Javert's to stop him from knocking his teacup over. Javert belatedly realised any additional sudden movement would result in broken crockery, and fought down the instinct to pull away. The effort of enduring Valjean's touch -- the big hand hot and dry and crushingly strong -- made him shudder as if his fever had returned.

Valjean said hesitantly: "That is not true, or not entirely true. Each of us has intrinsic value to God, who treasures the least of us in the same way as He mourns each sparrow which falls. It is for His sake that unjustly condemning one precious innocent is a far graver sin than to fail to condemn others who may be guilty." His grasp was certain; for once, he looked Javert dead in the eye. His brow shone as if he had swallowed the moral sun entirely.

"That is the way of anarchy!" Javert tried to calm himself. He searched Valjean's familiar face for signs of unsureness; he found none in the firm lines and unbroken features which he had known since they had both been young men. Valjean looked back with equanimity, and after a while Javert felt his hands stop shaking. 

Like a man who could learn to compromise, he said, "Very well, Valjean, it may be as you say. I ought not rush into upholding my old way of thinking." And indeed he truly ought not, lest he condemn himself once again to the river.

Valjean looked almost pleased. He patted Javert's hand, and finally let it go. Javert became aware of a strange sensation in his chest, somewhere under his breast-bone. He did not know what it was, but it suffused his body with unexpected warmth.

Instead, he drank his tea. His fingers prickled, as if with fear that Valjean would touch him again, or from a longing to recover the warmth of Valjean's firm clasp. 

"Every soul is precious to God," Valjean remarked. He refilled Javert's teacup, and Javert noticed he did not pour for himself. Indeed, the man had hardly touched his own tea.

Slowly, weeks and months of policeman's observation fell into place.

Javert said, slowly, "That only holds true when that one soul is not yours, am I right? I have seen how you live, the black bread on your table, how it is that you barely eat. You cannot live on tea alone. Does your daughter no longer spend her time here?"

Valjean rose, looking perturbed. He walked in a circle around his chair and stood facing the fireplace, which remained unlit. The powerful back that had lifted a fallen pillar of Toulon's town hall was still ramrod-straight, but now Javert was looking for it he could see that Valjean's waistcoat and trousers hung loosely on a body that was noticeably thinner. 

Quietly, Valjean murmured, as if to the fireplace, "Cosette does not like this apartment. Now she is readying for the wedding she is passing most of her time at Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire, which is only right."

"And why do you not move to Filles-du-Calvaire yourself?"

Valjean hung his white head. "I cannot. There are things I cannot make reparation for, that I do not deserve."

"You are impossible," Javert said, glaring at Valjean's back. "You are punishing yourself in truth and continue to do so, even though you have served your time and I have resigned from my career in order not to denounce you. " 

"This is not the same," Valjean protested. His shoulders shook, and still he did not dare turn around to look at Javert. "Both you and I have known what real punishment is like."

Valjean's words filled Javert with a sudden image of Toulon, and further, the tarred rope falling across those brawny shoulders as it would have in Toulon: the man naked, covered in a veneer of sweat, harsh sounds issuing from bared teeth as the lash cracked down. The sensation under Javert's breast-bone travelled south, to his gut, and then further down.

He said, thickly, "There is punishment that does not involve the lash. It is where fasting becomes starvation, and absence becomes desertion."

Valjean still did not answer or turn around, and against his will Javert remembered that muscular back emerging from under Fauchelevent's cart in Montreuil-sur-Mer, the mud on his clothes making the fabric cling to his shoulders and haunches and the expanse of his rear. 

Slowly, Javert remarked, "Perhaps it is the sort of punishment that you would relish."

"Who could relish such a thing?" Finally Valjean turned around. His brow looked damp. Perhaps his hands also trembled as he clenched and unclenched them nervously before him.

Javert's throat was unaccountably dry. "Who would relish it? A man who believed he had been insufficiently punished for something he did, or failed to do." 

For some reason, Javert imagined someone turning that man over his knee and taking a bare hand to him like one would a naughty child, as the feral prisoner Jean-le-Cric had never been chastised, nor Madeleine with his fancy clothes and manners, but as Jean Valjean himself might almost crave. Javert's own knees shook with that most unlikely notion.

That nameless person would address Jean Valjean as 'thou', and take the man's trousers down and redden his backside until it bore the pleasing ruddy marks of authority. Afterwards he would permit Valjean to dress, and would then speak sternly to him as he choked back his tears and promised never to transgress again.

"You might be right. Did you not once mean to punish me yourself, Inspector?" Valjean looked at Javert, his eyes unreadable, and Javert almost swallowed his tongue. Certainly Valjean's intentions were entirely serious, but Javert could not help interpreting the import of those words in quite another way.

Javert pulled himself together and spoke tartly. "As I said before, I am not the Inspector any longer. And of course I do not intend to punish you. I resigned from my post and tried to resign from my life so I could stay my hand from your punishment." He gestured fiercely to the table, narrowly missing the teapot. "Come. Drink your tea."

Valjean resumed his seat, picked up his cup, and drank from it compliantly. Javert pointedly refused to speculate as to what else the man would do compliantly -- on his knees, or across Javert's knee, or pressed against the peeling wallpaper beside that unlit fireplace, with Javert's teeth set into the thick muscle of his shoulder. 

"As I said before, Javert, I was willing to accept due punishment. I still am," Valjean said.

Javert made sure his voice was quite steady before he replied. "Perhaps if I were to be persuaded it was for the good of many."

"Perhaps it would be to the good of one," Valjean said, thoughtfully, and his sad eyes met Javert's again over the rim of his teacup. 

Javert had to set his own cup down. It seemed as though anything was possible in this new world he was building, girded by dangerous notions of punishment and mercy, underpinned by heavens knew what. He, Javert, might not be equal to the task, judging by how unsteady his hands had become, but perhaps he could rely on Jean Valjean's broad shoulders to shore up the foundations and hold the beams in place.

Perhaps, were they to reach consensus on proportionate justice, and on what each of them deserved, it might be a world they could build together.

**Author's Note:**

> My thanks to S. for the beta!
> 
> [Here](http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26962095) is my source on the history of tea-drinking in France as being the province of the grand bourgeoisie (admittedly via a British lens). 
> 
> In support of the presumption of innocence in criminal jurisprudence, Valjean cites [Blackstone's formulation](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone's_formulation), as well as Voltaire's:  
>  _"C'est de [Zadig] que les Nations tiennent ce grand principe, qu'il vaut mieux hazarder de sauver un coupable que de condamner un innocent."_ (It is from [Zadig] that the Nations hold this great principle, that it is better to risk saving a guilty man than to condemn an innocent.) Voltaire, Zadig, ch. 6 at 28 (Marcel Didier 1962).
> 
> In response, Javert considers [Jeremy Bentham](http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/bentham/), various [theories of punishment in criminology ](http://www2.law.ucla.edu/volokh/guilty.htm), and the work of Beaumont and De Tocqueville in _Du Système Pénitentiaire aux Etats-Unis, et de son Application en France; suivi d'un Appendice sur les Colonies Pénales, et de Notes Statistiques_ (On the Penitentiary System of the United States and Its Application in France, with an Appendix on Penal Colonies and Statistical Notes), 1833. See a review in English in the North American Review, Vol. 37, No. 80 (Jul., 1833), pp. 117-138.
> 
> [Further source](http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/justice-retributive/) on retributive justice and the lex talonis.
> 
> Sadly I have been unable to find academic links to working out one's actual guilt and desire for punishment via sexy spankings, but I feel certain this is a theory that has real, peer-reviewed (if unpublished) support.


End file.
